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I have trouble interpreting stories like these as anything other than scare tactics. I'm not a "denier". I'm acknowledging that there's been an increase, genera

I have trouble interpreting stories like these as anything other than scare tactics. I'm not a "denier". I'm acknowledging that there's been an increase, generally in the range of 1-2 degrees F. But given an increase of that magnitude, I find it very hard to blame for the kinds of problems being described here. 1F to 2F is well within the normal range of variation, and so if the roadways are suffering from it, it must be that the roads weren't properly designed for the expected variations to begin with.

JustUhThought 10y ago
1-2 degrees globally. Celsius. And the predictions are consistently outpaced by reality.
- JustUhThought 10y ago
  So, you were talking about temp change to date. Not predicted. My comment speaks to your commenet incorrectly. Sorry about that. I can't revise or delete my comment on this device, or I would. My bad.
- gruez 10y ago
  To add to this, it's not as if temperatures everywhere went up by 1-2 degrees. polar areas are more affected than average by global warming
  - vkou 10y ago
    The average world temperature is 1.4 C above the baseline this year. Yes, the poles have been hit the hardest, but we are still outpacing all predictions. Meanwhile, in 2015, the world's governments have agreed to cap warming to 2.0 C by 2100... But won't take any action today. Why do I have the feeling that we will completely miss that target?
    - CWuestefeld 10y ago
      but we are still outpacing all predictions. It's this kind of stuff that I'm arguing about. First, there's a wide range of predictions, and up until a decade ago, the measurements were middle of the road across them - far from "ALL predicitons". Then came the "pause". For over a decade, the warming seemed to pause. Notice I emphasize "seemed". The observed atmospheric temperature barely moved at all, it was way below ALL predictions. [1] I'm not denying, I'm not claiming that the "pause" disproves the theory. We know that there were other phenomena occurring, like oceans acting as a buffer. But the fact remains that observed temperatures deviated significantly below predictions for a protracted period of time. When people come along and make claims like we are still outpacing all predictions, they make it easy for deniers to single out these exaggerations and pretend like their inaccuracy disproves the whole idea. By giving the deniers an easy strawman to argue against, you're creating an obstacle to real progress on the problem. [1] "Scientists who study climate change and skeptics of human-caused global warming can agree on at least this: Global temperatures haven't risen nearly as much this century as model projections say they should have." -- https://www.wunderground.com/news/no-hiatus-pause-global-warming-climate-change-heres-why-20140109 https://www.wunderground.com/news/no-hiatus-pause-global-war... Of course, if you read on, you'll find proposed explanations for the phenomenon. But as far as atmospheric measurements go, it's absolutely false that things have been worse than predicted, and downright absurd to claim that things have been worse than "all" (i.e., even the most pessimistic) predictions.
      - vkou 10y ago
        When I say all predictions, I should have quantified it as 'all predictions used by policymakers'. There are certainly apocalyptic models that have called for more warming then what we've seen. We aren't using them to set policy - we are using models that have been underestimating the impact of warming.
- qeternity 10y ago
  What are you talking about? Reality has far underpaced most climate models. I'm not a denier either, but let's get the facts straight.
csours 10y ago
I don't know if you've been to Alaska, but a large part of the lowland is swamp that happens to be frozen most of the time. The current roads are basically a pile of gravel on top of that. If the swamp is frozen for less of the time, the gravel moves more. So yes, the road was not engineered with these conditions in mind, but building a road on a swamp is not easy to do, even if engineered correctly. Barely mentioned in the article, the Trans-Alaska Pipeline was built with cooling pipes to keep the ground it is built on cold. [1][2] 1. http://dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/a073597.pdf http://dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/a073597.pdf [pdf] 2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Construction_of_the_Trans-Alaska_Pipeline_System https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Construction_of_the_Trans-Alas...
- monknomo 10y ago
  Not even a pile a gravel. A pile of frozen swamp ploughed higher and higher until it quit sinking, then sprinkled with gravel and topped with asphalt The Tok Cutoff is particularly bad these days
  - csours 10y ago
    Fair enough. That swamp muck is even less stable when wet.
lamarkia 10y ago
An increase of 1C globally means that the planet gets hotter by a gazzilion of Watts. Imagine how much energy is needed to increase the temperature of a glass of water by just 1C. Then, a swimming pool. Finally, a planet.
Gravityloss 10y ago
I wonder, if a road lasted for seventy years, and then became unusable because of changes within ten, one could say that it's not within the "normal" variation anymore? Probably someone has an article that is a lot more exact and involves a lot more statistics...
- maxerickson 10y ago
  We don't have a clear picture of normal. This page has some graphs of ground temps the last 100 years: http://www.pmel.noaa.gov/arctic-zone/detect/land-permafrost.shtml http://www.pmel.noaa.gov/arctic-zone/detect/land-permafrost.... They are for areas north of the highway, but it shows temps in 1950 higher than they are today. The text also mentions that the ground has cooled slightly in the recent 20 years.
lkrubner 10y ago
You are in fact a mild denier. Merely writing "I'm not a denier" doesn't change the implications of what you are writing. While world wide changes might so far amount to 1-2 degrees F, it is well known that the warming is concentrated in the northern and southern latitudes, so the changes in Alaska are much more than the global average.
dagss 10y ago
So what are you saying happened -- somebody went in with machinery and created the cracks in the road, then go and pretend it is warming? Others have pointed out that avg(Alaska, Summer) != avg(World, All Year)
ChrisClark 10y ago
1 to 2 degrees increase in the global average is disastrous in the long term.
Diederich 10y ago
The temperature increase isn't evenly spread across the globe, it's concentrated toward the poles.
mikestew 10y ago
the roads weren't properly designed for the expected variations to begin with. Considering that the road has been there for seventy-years, I'd argue that it was designed just fine. I mean, yeesh, who am I going to pick for my SME on road construction, the anonymous dude/dudess on a forum devoted to work that will never involve a shovel or leave a callous on your finger, or the U. S. Army Corps of friggin' Engineers who have built roads in places you or I wouldn't survive more than a day or two? But all appeals to authority aside, let's assume for the moment that the road was built to account for a variation in temps. Problem is, that variation window moved by a few degrees. You get that, right? That the average temp was (just making up #s) 28F +/- 2F and now it's 30F +/- 2F? With my made up numbers, the road never reached the freezing (EDIT: melting, actually) point even with variation. Now it does.
dragonwriter 10y ago
A change of X degrees in the global average temperature does not mean a uniform, across all times and locations, increase of X degrees in local temperatures.
scatters 10y ago
The problems affect a fairly narrow band of latitudes; specifically, those where the average long-term temperature was just below freezing i.e. the southern margin of the permafrost. 1-2F is indeed within natural variation, but historically a warm year or two was followed by a harsh winter to refreeze the surface so that the deep layer stayed frozen. Now, the average temperature is just above freezing or close enough to it that the heating effect of the asphalt pushes the local average temperature above freezing. This means that deep layers are now thawing for the first time in thousands of years; they will stabilize eventually, but in the meantime they're going to be near impossible to build roads on. And the thaw line continues to march north, year by year.

JustUhThought 10y ago

1-2 degrees globally. Celsius. And the predictions are consistently outpaced by reality.

JustUhThought 10y ago
So, you were talking about temp change to date. Not predicted. My comment speaks to your commenet incorrectly. Sorry about that. I can't revise or delete my comment on this device, or I would. My bad.
gruez 10y ago
To add to this, it's not as if temperatures everywhere went up by 1-2 degrees. polar areas are more affected than average by global warming
- vkou 10y ago
  The average world temperature is 1.4 C above the baseline this year. Yes, the poles have been hit the hardest, but we are still outpacing all predictions. Meanwhile, in 2015, the world's governments have agreed to cap warming to 2.0 C by 2100... But won't take any action today. Why do I have the feeling that we will completely miss that target?
  - CWuestefeld 10y ago
    but we are still outpacing all predictions. It's this kind of stuff that I'm arguing about. First, there's a wide range of predictions, and up until a decade ago, the measurements were middle of the road across them - far from "ALL predicitons". Then came the "pause". For over a decade, the warming seemed to pause. Notice I emphasize "seemed". The observed atmospheric temperature barely moved at all, it was way below ALL predictions. [1] I'm not denying, I'm not claiming that the "pause" disproves the theory. We know that there were other phenomena occurring, like oceans acting as a buffer. But the fact remains that observed temperatures deviated significantly below predictions for a protracted period of time. When people come along and make claims like we are still outpacing all predictions, they make it easy for deniers to single out these exaggerations and pretend like their inaccuracy disproves the whole idea. By giving the deniers an easy strawman to argue against, you're creating an obstacle to real progress on the problem. [1] "Scientists who study climate change and skeptics of human-caused global warming can agree on at least this: Global temperatures haven't risen nearly as much this century as model projections say they should have." -- https://www.wunderground.com/news/no-hiatus-pause-global-warming-climate-change-heres-why-20140109 https://www.wunderground.com/news/no-hiatus-pause-global-war... Of course, if you read on, you'll find proposed explanations for the phenomenon. But as far as atmospheric measurements go, it's absolutely false that things have been worse than predicted, and downright absurd to claim that things have been worse than "all" (i.e., even the most pessimistic) predictions.
    - vkou 10y ago
      When I say all predictions, I should have quantified it as 'all predictions used by policymakers'. There are certainly apocalyptic models that have called for more warming then what we've seen. We aren't using them to set policy - we are using models that have been underestimating the impact of warming.
qeternity 10y ago
What are you talking about? Reality has far underpaced most climate models. I'm not a denier either, but let's get the facts straight.

csours 10y ago

I don't know if you've been to Alaska, but a large part of the lowland is swamp that happens to be frozen most of the time. The current roads are basically a pile of gravel on top of that. If the swamp is frozen for less of the time, the gravel moves more. So yes, the road was not engineered with these conditions in mind, but building a road on a swamp is not easy to do, even if engineered correctly. Barely mentioned in the article, the Trans-Alaska Pipeline was built with cooling pipes to keep the ground it is built on cold. [1][2] 1. http://dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/a073597.pdf http://dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/a073597.pdf [pdf] 2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Construction_of_the_Trans-Alaska_Pipeline_System https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Construction_of_the_Trans-Alas...

monknomo 10y ago
Not even a pile a gravel. A pile of frozen swamp ploughed higher and higher until it quit sinking, then sprinkled with gravel and topped with asphalt The Tok Cutoff is particularly bad these days
- csours 10y ago
  Fair enough. That swamp muck is even less stable when wet.

lamarkia 10y ago

An increase of 1C globally means that the planet gets hotter by a gazzilion of Watts. Imagine how much energy is needed to increase the temperature of a glass of water by just 1C. Then, a swimming pool. Finally, a planet.

Gravityloss 10y ago

I wonder, if a road lasted for seventy years, and then became unusable because of changes within ten, one could say that it's not within the "normal" variation anymore? Probably someone has an article that is a lot more exact and involves a lot more statistics...

maxerickson 10y ago
We don't have a clear picture of normal. This page has some graphs of ground temps the last 100 years: http://www.pmel.noaa.gov/arctic-zone/detect/land-permafrost.shtml http://www.pmel.noaa.gov/arctic-zone/detect/land-permafrost.... They are for areas north of the highway, but it shows temps in 1950 higher than they are today. The text also mentions that the ground has cooled slightly in the recent 20 years.

lkrubner 10y ago

You are in fact a mild denier. Merely writing "I'm not a denier" doesn't change the implications of what you are writing. While world wide changes might so far amount to 1-2 degrees F, it is well known that the warming is concentrated in the northern and southern latitudes, so the changes in Alaska are much more than the global average.

dagss 10y ago

So what are you saying happened -- somebody went in with machinery and created the cracks in the road, then go and pretend it is warming? Others have pointed out that avg(Alaska, Summer) != avg(World, All Year)

ChrisClark 10y ago

1 to 2 degrees increase in the global average is disastrous in the long term.

Diederich 10y ago

The temperature increase isn't evenly spread across the globe, it's concentrated toward the poles.

mikestew 10y ago

the roads weren't properly designed for the expected variations to begin with. Considering that the road has been there for seventy-years, I'd argue that it was designed just fine. I mean, yeesh, who am I going to pick for my SME on road construction, the anonymous dude/dudess on a forum devoted to work that will never involve a shovel or leave a callous on your finger, or the U. S. Army Corps of friggin' Engineers who have built roads in places you or I wouldn't survive more than a day or two? But all appeals to authority aside, let's assume for the moment that the road was built to account for a variation in temps. Problem is, that variation window moved by a few degrees. You get that, right? That the average temp was (just making up #s) 28F +/- 2F and now it's 30F +/- 2F? With my made up numbers, the road never reached the freezing (EDIT: melting, actually) point even with variation. Now it does.

dragonwriter 10y ago

A change of X degrees in the global average temperature does not mean a uniform, across all times and locations, increase of X degrees in local temperatures.

scatters 10y ago

The problems affect a fairly narrow band of latitudes; specifically, those where the average long-term temperature was just below freezing i.e. the southern margin of the permafrost. 1-2F is indeed within natural variation, but historically a warm year or two was followed by a harsh winter to refreeze the surface so that the deep layer stayed frozen. Now, the average temperature is just above freezing or close enough to it that the heating effect of the asphalt pushes the local average temperature above freezing. This means that deep layers are now thawing for the first time in thousands of years; they will stabilize eventually, but in the meantime they're going to be near impossible to build roads on. And the thaw line continues to march north, year by year.